As far as its story goes, Crysis 3 is just a run-of-the-mill shooter. Gamers fill the shoes of the Prophet, a super soldier tasked with saving the earth from the evil CELL corporation and a plethora of angry aliens.

Photo credit: Gamespot.com

It’s a familiar — and hardly compelling — narrative.

But storytelling has never been Crytek’s strong point. The company builds beautiful games that show off the hardware potential of consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and put hardcore PC gaming rigs to the test.

Like its predecessors, then, Crysis 3 is being lauded for its graphics and bashed for a somewhat lame storyline and achingly familiar gameplay. Currently, its average score on Metacritic is 77/100 (with users scoring it even lower).

The problem? Not the game, says Crytek’s founder. Instead, Yerli suggests that the problem is with aging technology — remember that, not too long ago, Yerli suggested that Crysis 3 was pushing the PS3 and Xbox 360 to their limits.

“There’s a certain fatigue level with the old generation currently,” Yerli said. “The markets are down […] people’s expectations are much more radical than the current generation of games are doing.”

Yerli says that a “new generation of consoles will reinvigorate that” and serve to “elevate new concepts of gaming which old platforms are now limiting.”

But is that really a viable excuse? Certainly other developers are still building great PS3 and Xbox 360 games. And why should there be any limit on PC games?